‘A new-born of respectable class would have weighed more’: Class, gender and child neglect in late-nineteenth century England

This article published in Child and Family Law Quarterly 2022 Issue 2 is available to download in full here.

Abstract

This article explores how child neglect was criminalised during the period that the first statutory offence existed but was not enforced. The article addresses a gap in scholarship by exploring the Victorian origins of the neglect law and the ways it disproportionately penalised poor families when a child suffered from a lack of material provision. This was particularly true for biological mothers and a limited number of biological fathers who were treated more harshly by Victorian juries if they transgressed middle-class expectations of gender. Class here.